48 



THE AMERICAN BOTANIST 



by everyone who has attempted this dangerous country. He 

 states (Natural History of Hawaii, p. 107), "The writer, 

 with an experienced native guide, spent three weeks in the 

 region . . . and amid chiUing rains and bewildering fogs 

 made an expedition extending through four days over miles 

 of quaking moss-grown bog to . . . the summit of Wal- 

 aleale. We were never out of the dense fog during the expe- 

 dition, and that we returned to our camp and the civilization 

 at all has always seemed little short of the miraculous . . . 

 Our chief concern was to locate reasonably solid ground, a 

 necessary precaution that entailed many weary miles of 

 wandering in the wierd moss-grown wilderness." 



This vast bog- is an inexhaustable reservoir for all the lee- 

 ward streams, and has given them the material for cutting 

 the great canyons of southern Kauai. A considerable portion 

 of the island eight to ten miles south of the bogs is thus 

 abundantly supplied with water at all times. In a similar 

 manner the bogs of Molokai and of Kohala are the head- 

 waters of important streams. 



The plant life, although stunted and windswept, is diver- 

 sified. A high percentage of the species and varieties are 

 endemic. A number of the varieties are bog forms of species 

 that are abundant at the lower levels. The lehua {Metro sideros 

 pO'lyinorplia Gaud), which in the forests of Puna is a mag- 

 nificent tree towering to the height of 125 feet, on the summit 

 of Wai-aleale is a stunted shrub, or even a prostrate creeper 

 among the sedges. The native name for a portion of this 

 swamp is Lehua makano^e, which means "the lehua tree in 

 the fog." 



In his monumental treatise on "The Unwritten Literature 

 of Hawaii" (Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 38), 

 Dr. N. B. Emerson gives a translation of an ancient inele which 

 contains sO' much of interest, that it is presented in part : 



